The general public likely believes that a dog’s color makes little difference to the dog, or even to a breed; the Greyhound standard, for instance, indicates that color is “immaterial,” and it’s not the only standard in which color makes no difference.

In fact, color can make a lot of difference to some breeds. Before we get into one of them,  it’s interesting to note that a University of Sidney study published in Science Daily reported that coat color directly impacts a puppy’s life expectancy, and more specifically, that dogs with liver or chocolate coloration are more prone to obesity, joint conditions, and ear infections.  A related study conducted by Louisiana State University reported data on over 11,000 dogs using the Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response (or BAER test) that looked at brain activity caused when sounds are registered by the ears. The study found that congenital hearing loss due to genetic factors were associated with certain coat colors, namely white, piebald, roan, and merle.

The Cane Corso’s AKC standard indicates that acceptable colors are black, lighter and darker shades of gray, lighter and darker shades of fawn, and red, with brindling allowed on all of them.

Black is probably the most sought after color in this breed, and good thing because it’s genetically dominant.  A black Cane Corso isn’t homozygous for dilution, so their eumelanin (one of two pigments) stays black resulting in a solid black dog. The undercoat of a black Corso is often less dense than the coats of other colors, but it absorbs heat more readily making a dog of this color more susceptible to overheating under the sun.

A black brindle Cane Corso has a brown or red base, and its black brindling has been called “tiger stripes.” We read the opinion of one European breeder who found that his/her black brindles lived longer than Corsos of other colors. Curious, we delved a little more into this and found a study published in the Open Veterinary Journal in 2017. It found that the “median lifespan of black brindle dogs exceeded the overall median lifespan of all dogs by 1.01 years and the median lifespan of other color dogs by 2.21 years.”  The breeder was right! Furthermore, we rather like the description that a Corso fan, Dr. Flavio Bruno, gave this color: “A “tiger-striped or tawny striped with huge jaws.”

When two Corsos carrying a recessive dilute gene are bred together, they pass it on to their puppies. In such a puppy, eumelanin production is inhibited and the puppy will be grey in color. This is harder to breed than black, and Corso puppies born gray don’t always stay that way. Over time, the color may dim or brighten, and in some cases, a pup thought to be gray when it was born can show some brindle as its coat changes. We should note that sometimes these dogs are described as “blues,” a color not listed for the breed in the AKC or FCI standards.  Buyer beware: Some breeders will tout their rare “blue” Cane Corso puppy when in fact, it’s a gray Corso with a different name.

Another grey is a gray brindle, and 50% of puppies born to two grey brindle parents will be grey brindle puppies. These dogs have a brown base color. We’ve come across sources that state that gray brindle Corsi also have a longer life expectancy than the solid-colored dogs.

A cream or tan colored Cane Corso is known as a fawn. It’s not a red for which it can be mistaken, and both the AKC and FCI regard fawn and red as two colors as distinct from one another. A red Corso is the result of pheomelanin pigmentation which can differ different genetic pathways resulting in a variety of reds, from a deep mahogany to the color of a German Spätlese.  This color has been known in the breed since the 3rd century when Italians used Corsi of this color to hunt: Their coloring made them hard to see by their prey in the Italian landscape.

Another tiger striped Corso is the chestnut brindle. While they have a red or brown base color, their stripes are a reddish-brown in bright light, but almost black as the sun goes down. This color is less common than some of the other colors, and it can be difficult to breed for, especially since at least one gene responsible for coat color is located on a sex chromosome. That means a puppy’s coat color is influenced by its gender, as well as the color of its parents.

There are other colors that we’ll touch upon future posts, some of them associated with issues. For that reason, it’s important to mention that breeders who breed Cane Corsos only for color with little regard for soundness and health testing are not good breeders. They may advertise their puppies as having rare colors, and as such, justify the insane prices they charge even when the pup may be at risk of carrying a congenital disease. In the end, who suffers?

We circle back to where we started, and that was whether color made any difference to the dog. Given that a study concluded that brindle Cane Corsos live longer than solid colored ones, that Cane Corsos with paler coats tend to be more susceptible to skin problems, and that black ones are more prone to heat exhaustion, we’d say yes, it makes a difference to the dog!

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